knuckleheadsmif

15 ms·

61.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
No one knew the right way to do stuff. Star had a noun/verb model of doing actions that all objects you could select responded to in the same way. It did not use control key combinations. It was actually much easier to learn and more c
62.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
It originally shipped with a mechanical mouse. Later on Xerox changed to an optical mouse with crappy cheap buttons. It did rely on alternating patterns but blue jeans worked well. :-)
63.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
It was also not slower than the Lisa which came out later. I remember going to a Lisa demo at UCLA and it was super well scripted as someone would click on the screen while talking about something and the 20 seconds later start talking abou
64.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
Which matches my comment about the Arabic text. These images are all from different times/release is my guess.
65.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
It was XCCS (Xerox Character Code Standard) which is really the predecessor to Unicode. Both initially were 16 but character code spaces (Unicode was later extended) and Unicode developed by many of the same folks in Unison with Apple. I wa
66.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
Star also did not support the type of window clipping you see with the car over the Lisa desktop. It’s a mock-up to show off something.
67.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
I think the one with the Lisa is a complete mock-up. The car is clipping the window and I only think that happened in the graphic editors.
68.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
The first 12 images are all real working software but from different times and systems (XDE, Star and possible Interlisp.) As an FYI, one actual shows an overlapping window in Star, actually a property sheet. Most people didn’t know that St
69.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
Lots of Lisa history on that. The only real thing if I remember correctly that Lisa copied from Star was the desktop itself after viewing a the NCC. Software architecture wise however the two systems shared many concepts (but not tools or
70.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
Star did have a pull down menu attached to each window in the corner and looked like a modern hamburger icon. The contents varied by window.
71.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
The image of the Lisa desktop was not running on Star. Star was software, the hardware ran many different Xerox systems. It was running under some other Xerox system/OS. Hard to say what it was. Could have been XDE (unlikely because I
72.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
Fyi, some of those photos are much later than 1981. I wrote added the Arabic/Hebrew support to the Star document editor which probably was about 1984 and showed in one of the photos. I was still in college in 1981 so that could not hav
73.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
If you look close one of the photos labeled Star was really XDE. Rather than object Icons it had a process bar (running applications) at the bottom. It’s the photo with only the XDE mail tool window open.
74.
by knuckleheadsmif 3y ago
XDE, the Mesa development environment was run on the same hardware as Star. Star’s biggest issue was that it had far too little real memory and was always thrashing. XDE did much better than Star on a small memory footprint and did not feel
75.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
I had a similar story around 1976-77 where my dad took me to his office to use the basic interpreter on some Wang word processing machine I don’t remember the model number but probably something in the 2200 series.
76.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
I never heard of the Plato connection when I worked on Star in the 80s at Xerox. This is news to me. I’d really like to see more documented proof of this. I also working on the Multilingual stuff (I implemented the bidi stuff in the Star ed
77.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
I was in Xerox SDD in the early 80’s I have lots of memories dealing with the large coax taps which we in the ceiling. I also remember setting up a Star demo at the NCC and someone forget coax cable terminators (or was short one terminator?
78.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
What not use an old Twitter building? Seems like Tesla could get a good deal from the landlord.
79.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
You might be right that it was only 150 baud; honestly don’t remember.
80.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
Anyone whoever programmed on punch cards always numbered them so the you could sort them if you ever dropped your deck. Strategic numbering was even more important then. Most of us preprogrammed the punch machines, via a punch card itself m
81.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
Well back in the day… I did my Basic programming on a real Teletype Terminal (not an TTY screen) connected via an acoustic coupler running at 300 baud to a Honeywell timesharing system and saved/loaded programs via punch paper tape on
82.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
I had the pleasure of having dinner around 1990, with my team of 6 from Apple, at Steve’s Woodside residence with Steve trying to recruit us into coming to NeXT. One of the team alerted Apple lawyers and Steve started the evening reading a
83.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
The modifications Novel made to the XNS protocols for the most part very minor.
84.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
Here is a blog about the unique Apple server and Netware http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2021/10/shiner-esb-apple-network-...
85.
by knuckleheadsmif 4y ago
I worked for Apple porting Netware to the first PowerPC machines for an Apple server code named that was released with AIX running on it. The Netware project was cancelled as it was about to enter Beta as both companies were hitting hard ti